5th CIRCUIT COURT OF APPELAS GETS IT RIGHT

In 2014 the Supreme Court handed down
the infamous Hobby Lobby
decision which allowed religious employers the right to deny their female
employees birth control. The right-wing hailed the decision and “Christian”
employers all over the country started joyfully denying women access to contraceptives.
The only thing those employers had to do was fill out a form

or write a short
letter informing the federal government that they were invoking the “right” the
misguided ruling afforded them and they’d be exempt from the birth control
mandate. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, apparently it wasn’t easy enough for
the vapid, women-hating, right-wing Christian employers, because they sued
again; but this time one of their very own conservative judges threw them out
of court.

East Texas Baptist University v. Burwell is a group of cases that were consolidated as one and they all involve
religious employers who want to deny their employees contraception. Although
this is already their right under the SCOTUS ruling, they all have a problem
with the guidelines that they have to follow in order to deny the basic medical
care: they don’t want to submit the paperwork. When a company doesn’t want to
offer the birth control that their archaic rules for social control, they are
required to submit the paperwork mentioned above and then the federal
government works with an independent insurance company to provide the employees
access to birth control. The plaintiffs in this case, claimed that by
submitting the paperwork to the federal government, they became facilitators
for the birth control they don’t believe in, in a show of incredible
self-centered pettiness.

When the case worked its way to the 5th
Circuit of Appeals it landed in Judge Jerry Smith’s lap and the attorneys for
the plaintiffs probably rejoiced. Judge Jerry Smith is a Reagan appointee with
deeply conservative views. In fact, he is so conservative he once denied a
man’s death row appeal even though the man’s lawyer slept through most of the
trial. This is a judge who called feminists “gaggle of outcasts, misfits and
rejects.” So when the judge handed down an opinion that protected women’s
access to contraceptives and basically told the plaintiffs to get over
themselves, it is a BIG deal.

Judge Smith used the right-wing’s
much-loved federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to rule against the
religious employers. When Smith applied the RFRA rule that the federal
government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” to
the plaintiff’s case, he found that they did prove that the federal government
was in violation of the law.

“Although the plaintiffs have identified
several acts that offend their religious beliefs, the acts they are required to
perform do not include providing or facilitating access to contraceptives,” Smith explains
in the judge panel’s unanimous opinions. “Instead, the acts that violate their
faith are those of third parties.” Specifically, the plaintiffs object to the
federal government working with an insurance administrator to provide
contraception to certain workers. But the law does not “entitle them to block
third parties from engaging in conduct with which they disagree.”

He also said that if he were to rule in
their favor, it would pave the way for all sorts of nonsense:

“Perhaps an applicant for Social
Security disability benefits disapproves of working on Sundays and is unwilling
to assist others in doing so,” Smith explains. “He could challenge a
requirement that he use a form to apply because the Social Security
Administration might process it on a Sunday. Or maybe a pacifist refuses to
complete a form to indicate his beliefs because that information would enable
the Selective Service to locate eligible draftees more quickly. The
possibilities are endless, but we doubt Congress, in enacting RFRA, intended
for them to be.”

There will, of course, be an appeal to
the Supreme Court, because the right is fixated on their war against women.
These religious employers don’t really care about Jesus; they care about
punishing women for having sex. It is the same mentality conservatives have
when they go on and on about being “pro-life.” They aren’t actually “pro-life”
because if they were, they’d do everything they possibly do to prevent unwanted
pregnancies, thus reducing the need for abortions. They would also support all
of the social programs in place to take care of babies after they are born, but
they hate those programs too. This is how we definitively know the “war against
women” is just that: a war. Religious conservatives want women to be punished
for their “scandalous” sex lives; it doesn’t matter to them that birth control
also treats a number of painful disorders, like endometriosis. The fact that
one woman may take those pills or have that IUD implanted in order to prevent a
pregnancy is enough for them to want to get rid of it.

Luckily, for women, now that a judge as
conservative as Smith has thrown them out on their ears, it is unlikely the
Supreme Court will have hear their endless complaints.

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